It was a relief to get back to the morgue. I had the beginnings of a headache, but I was determined to finish my task.
It didn’t take long. The facts were quite simple: At approximately 5 P.M. on Monday, March 15, 1976, secretary Maude Galloway knocked on the door of her boss, Dean of Students Darryl Nugent, to tell him she was leaving for the day. “The dean was writing on a legal pad. He barely looked up when I knocked. He said, ‘Good night, Maude.’ I closed the door to his office and left.”
Darryl Nugent was never seen again.
I replaced the bound volume of Clarions and gathered up my notes.
I had some ideas about how Maggie should begin. Tomorrow I would share them with her.
four
STEAM curled from the mouth of the thermos. Coffee gurgled into my mug. I always enjoy using this mug, a gift from my daughter, Emily. The mug is fire-engine red. An arched black cat forms its handle. Inside the mug, a small gray mouse perches on a tiny ceramic ledge. The legend reads “Morning Delight.”
I lifted the mug, savored the scent and welcomed the pungent flavor of its contents. Whether it was the stimulus of the caffeine or the excitement of the chase, this morning I felt I could take on the world—including President Tucker—and win hands down. Gone was last night’s fatigue. And I’d dismissed my worry that Maggie Winslow might be too distracted by her personal life to do a good job. Maggie—whether romantically involved with Dennis Duffy, placating her boyfriend, or avoiding Rita Duffy—had an assignment from me that better take precedence.
I wasn’t going to do Maggie’s work for her, but I could, one way or another, point her in the right direction.
I pulled my legal pad closer and checked the questions I wanted Maggie to explore:
Rosen-Voss case
Did anyone profit?
Enemies?
Quarrels?
Ex-lovers?
Competition?
Why that particular night?
What happened to Howard Rosen and Gail Voss on the day they died?
Why Lovers’ Lane????
Candace Murdoch
Who else might have wanted Curt Murdoch dead?
Previous connection between Angela Chavez and Candace Murdoch?
Check Angel’s story.
Darryl Nugent
Get his appointments the day he disappeared.
Love affair?
Money missing?
Family problems?
Health problems?
Talk to his secretary.
I finished my coffee and glanced at the clock. Forty past eight.
Maggie was late.
I reached for the phone, impatiently jabbed the numbers.
“Winslow residence.”
A male voice.
Not Eric March was my first quick thought. And not another student. This was a man’s voice, deeper, harder, heavier.
“May I speak to Maggie Winslow, please.”
“Who’s calling?”
There was a brusqueness to the request that I didn’t like. But I wanted to talk to Maggie. “Henrietta Collins.”
“Hold on.”
I heard the receiver being muffled.
In a moment, a different man spoke.
“Lieutenant Urschel.” His voice was hoarse, raspy. “Derry Hills Police Department.”
I didn’t need the identifying tag.
Lieutenant Larry Urschel. His name was in my notes, the officer in charge of the investigation into the murders of Howard Rosen and Gail Voss.
“Lieutenant Urschel—” It was hard to talk, the words felt like pebbles in my throat. “Where’s Maggie?”
I drive fast. It’s always hard to keep my MG below the speed limit. This morning I didn’t try. I shot beneath a canopy of trees into the dimness of Lovers’ Lane and a half mile later slewed to a stop at the barricade. As I got out of the car, a young uniformed patrolman walked up.
“Mrs. Collins?”
I nodded.
This boy didn’t look old enough to be a movie usher, but his eyes already had the wary, careful look of a cop, checking out my hands, checking out my vehicle.
I fastened my jacket. It was still cold, the winter-coming chill of a mid-November morning, even though it would soon warm into the sixties. Fog wreathed the trees, eddied in torn swaths over the road.
“Lieutenant Urschel is on his way, Mrs. Collins. He asked that you wait here for him.”
“All right.” I looked past the patrolman. I could hear movement and voices, but I couldn’t see around the bend where the barricade had been set up.
I was familiar with the terrain. I’d attended an outdoor performance of Blithe Spirit at the University amphitheater last summer. It was heavily wooded here. Oaks, hickories, and feathery-branched pines fought for space. Oak limbs thick as my body locked above the road. The blacktop wound around several more hills before it reached the amphitheater on a rise overlooking Boone Lake. I doubted that Daniel Boone had ever set up camp by these waters, but it was a local legend highly prized by Derry Hills residents.
“It’s been a hell of a morning—”
A dusty green Ford Bronco jolted to a stop beside my MG.
The young patrolman broke off and stood tall and straight. He didn’t salute, but the effect was the same.
The driver’s door slammed. The man who moved toward us had the broad shoulders and athletic certitude of an old football player. His stride was just this side of a swagger. His waist was still trim, though I pegged him to be in his mid-forties. His close-cropped brown hair was flecked with gray, and his bulldog-square face was heavily lined. He wore an inexpensive brown suit. The jacket was a size too small. Did he stubbornly refuse to acknowledge weight gain? Or was his salary stretched as tight as his suit coat?
When we faced each other, combative eyes scanned me with the rapidity of a carnival barker sizing up the crowd. I read the evaluation in them: Late sixties, big city, money, sure of herself, handle with care.
“Lieutenant Urschel?” I held out my hand. “Henrietta Collins.”
There was a barely perceptible pause before the homicide detective thrust out a tanned, muscular hand. “Ma’am.” His grip was cold, firm, fleeting. Shaking hands with a woman wasn’t his style. “Appreciate your coming.” His voice reminded me of President Clinton’s. Did Urschel, too, have allergies? Or had he smoked too many cigarettes for too many years? “I met you last year. At Don’s wedding.”
Don Brown is also a lieutenant in the Derry Hills P.D. He is a friend of mine. We’d first become acquainted shortly after I came to Thorndyke and a young woman was murdered in the apartment house where I was staying.
I’d enjoyed Don’s wedding very much. But Urschel’s memory of the event was better than mine. I didn’t remember him. Perhaps I don’t scan crowds with the same intensity.
“Yes. Of course. How is Don?”
Urschel’s sandy eyebrows rose a fraction. “Okay. I guess. He’s on paternity leave.” He tried to say it matter-of-factly. He didn’t quite bring it off. Between forty-something and thirty-something, there is more than a gap in time. “Okay.” His eyes flicked toward my right hand and the wedding band I still wore. “Mrs. Collins. You know Maggie Win slow. Right?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“Then if you’ll come this way—”
Just around the curve, an ambulance waited, lights blinking. Police tape on stakes fluttered around a twenty-foot square of the blacktopped road.
A woman’s body lay in a crumpled heap in the center of this marked-off area. Her magenta suit was sodden from the heavy mist of the night, and the short skirt was hiked up almost to her hips. Her face was pressed against the asphalt. A jade silk scarf poked out from beneath hair that had once been sleek and glossy, and now lay dank and damp on skin no longer living. The scarf cut deeply into her neck. A black leather shoulder bag rested about a foot from the corpse.
A technician within the cordoned-off area looked toward us. She brushed back a strand of s
trawberry-blond hair with the back of a latex-gloved hand and said quietly, “I’m finished, Lieutenant. They can take her now.”
“Not yet.”
The tech shot him a cool glance, but said nothing. She got up a little stiffly, moved to unlimber her muscles, then reached down for a blue vinyl bag.
A lanky photographer crouched a couple of feet away. “Just a few more shots, Lieutenant,” he called, not looking our way.
When the photographer rose, Urschel jerked his head at me. “Mrs. Collins, she checks out with the photo on her driver’s license. But for the record—”
I didn’t want to see her face.
But Urschel hadn’t invited me here for my benefit. At his nod, the technician eased the rigid body over, gently swiped the dank hair away from the face.
It was as ugly as I had known it would be.
And it was Maggie.
My hands clenched. “Yes.” I had trouble breathing. “It is Maggie Winslow.”
Maggie Winslow, arrogant, confident, and good. Very, very good at reporting. Maybe not so good in judging the impact of her questions.
But I was the one who’d demanded that she do more than rehash old crimes for the entertainment of readers. I’d insisted I’d accept the work only if she turned up new information. I’d even been pleased when I saw her brazen, bold ad in The Clarion Wednesday morning. Way to go, Maggie, I’d thought.
Pleased.
Dammit. Oh, dammit, what had I done?
“Sorry, ma’am.” But Urschel’s tone was perfunctory, and there was no pause before the next question. “You were her professor?”
I stared at Maggie’s body, bunched awkwardly on the asphalt. “Yes.” Oh, yes, indeed, the professor who wanted fresh facts about crime, very fresh facts. But also the professor who’d worried that Maggie’s personal problems might intrude on her work. Had her personal problems led to this ugly finale? For my own peace of mind, I desperately hoped so.
“What was so damn important you left her a message to be in your office at eight-thirty this morning?” The words peppered me like pellets.
My head jerked toward him.
Of course Urschel had listened to Maggie’s messages. And the crisp demand I’d left Wednesday evening—I must talk to you tomorrow as soon as possible—wasn’t the ordinary exchange between a professor and a student.
His avid eyes watched me like a feral cat tracking a field rat.
“I wanted to speak with Maggie about some articles she was working on under my supervision.” Briefly, I described the investigative series Maggie had proposed. When I mentioned the old Lovers’ Lane murders, Urschel’s square face tightened.
That’s when I popped my own question. “Is this where they found Howard Rosen and Gail Voss?” My voice had a tight, thin edge.
Oh, Maggie, was it those murders that brought you to this dank, solitary place?
Lieutenant Urschel looked down the lane. His face creased. “No. Rosen’s car was closer to the lake.”
In 1988, the dead students were found in a car. But Maggie’s body lay in the middle of the road. “Where’s Maggie’s car?”
“We’re looking for it.” Urschel blinked as if obliterating a vision of the past, and his stare settled on me. “Now, Mrs. Collins, what was so urgent—”
I’d expected to deal with the problem of Maggie Winslow and Dennis Duffy today. But not this way.
“—that you had to see Maggie Winslow first thing this morning?”
I had no right to keep quiet about last night’s ugly scene in the newsroom. As matter-of-factly as possible, I told Urschel about Rita Duffy’s furious arrival, hunting for her husband—and Maggie.
Urschel pulled a small notebook from his pocket, flipped it open. “So who are these people?”
I gave him the names.
“Mrs. Duffy thought she”—and he jerked his head toward the body—“was screwing her husband?”
“Yes.” I turned my head away from Maggie. I concentrated on the tendrils of fog in the pines.
“This Duffy woman was real mad?” His husky voice was uninflected, but the pen was poised above the pad.
“Yes.” In my mind I heard again the clatter of Rita Duffy’s footsteps and the asthmatic wheeze of the J-School door.
Urschel made a note. His heavy face looked satisfied. I could read his thoughts. This was going to be a quick one, he had decided, an easy one. But he wasn’t quite finished with me. “Where were you last night, between six and eight?”
“Is that when Maggie was killed?” Rita Duffy had burst into the newsroom about six-thirty.
Cops like to ask questions, not answer them.
There was a noticeable pause, then Urschel replied curtly, “Early last evening. Where were you?”
It was like dealing with a boomerang. Every question brought it back to me.
I sketched out my evening.
“These files you checked. They all had to do with the series she”—the lieutenant again jerked his head toward that still figure—“was writing?”
“Yes.”
He waited.
Old reporters know better than anyone that one-word answers can keep you out of trouble.
I waited, too.
He had less time than I. “Who saw you?” His tone betrayed his irritation. Urschel still stood a couple of feet away, well out of my space, but I felt pressed.
“Most of the time I was alone in The Clarion morgue. That’s where the back editions are kept.”
“You were working pretty late. Right?” There was nothing ominous in his words, but I felt a prickle of unease.
“Fairly late.”
“You go to this kind of trouble for all your students?” He didn’t try to hide his disbelief.
I didn’t like the question, and I didn’t like the implication. “No,” I replied pleasantly, “I do not go to this kind of effort for all my students.”
Urschel snapped, “What got you so involved, Mrs. Collins?”
“There were special circumstances, Lieutenant.” I told Urschel about Maggie’s ad. “The Clarion is well read. That ad attracted the attention of Dr. Tucker.”
Lieutenant Urschel’s eyes narrowed. I didn’t need to identify the University president for him. Tucker was a Derry Hills mover and shaker.
“Dr. Tucker didn’t want Maggie to do the series.” I intended to make it very clear that the possibility of bringing those investigations back to life definitely displeased Thorndyke’s president. “He wanted me to request that Maggie drop her investigations of the crimes.”
I hoped this conversation would lead Urschel directly to the president’s office.
But as I talked, I realized Urschel wasn’t interested in the series. He was merely puzzled by what he saw as an odd relationship between a student and a professor. When the student was murdered, anything odd blinked like neon.
“In fact, Dr. Tucker was—”
“Yeah, I see,” he said abruptly, cutting me off. He snapped shut the notebook.
“Lieutenant.” He was dismissing me, but I wasn’t ready to go yet. I felt at a huge disadvantage. As a reporter, you have some standing. And a reporter who covers the police beat builds up long-term relationships. This cop will open up. That one can be charmed. Another will kindly respond to respectful inquiries. Yet another is scared of the press. But I didn’t know Urschel. I had no inkling how to approach him. But I had to give it a try. “Lieutenant, what counts here is that I insisted that Maggie hunt for new facts for those articles. And now she’s dead. In Lovers’ Lane. What if she found out who killed Howard Rosen and Gail Voss?”
“No way, Professor.” Urschel’s eyes locked with mine. “A kid reporter can’t find an answer in a few hours that I couldn’t find in months of looking. So you can relax. The Rosen-Voss case had nothing to do with this murder.” He turned away.
“Lieutenant Urschel, why was Maggie killed here—in Lovers’ Lane—if there’s no connection?”
I thought he was going to ignore m
e. Cops protect facts in an investigation as Woodward and Bernstein protected Deep Throat. But, grudgingly, Urschel looked back at me. “The ME said she wasn’t killed here. The lividity’s wrong. She was knocked unconscious, strangled, and left lying on her side. Somebody dumped her here an hour or so after death.” Once again his gaze flicked down the road. I knew he was remembering another crime scene. He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Collins, this girl was strangled. The students in ’88 were shot. You can rest easy, Professor. This murder has nothing to do with the Lovers’ Lane murders. Nothing.”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I have no classes on Thursdays. Throughout the day, I graded papers, but it was easy to track the investigation into Maggie’s murder by looking through my office window into The Clarion newsroom. I kept my office door open so I could hear snatches of conversation.
Buddy Neville had taken over as deputy city editor, subbing for Eric March. Dennis Duffy, his face ashen, stared dully at his computer, apparently leaving most of the work to Buddy. Buddy tried to submerge his pleasure in handling a big breaking story with an occasional muttered “Too bad about Maggie” or “Poor old Eric.” But mostly the boy’s eyes gleamed with excitement, and he barked orders over the phone to Kitty Brewster, who was covering the police beat.
If only I had the police beat…
The newsroom drew other faculty like a magnet. Everybody wanted to know what was happening. Helen Tracy, the LifeStyle editor, darted from desk to desk like a honey bee after nectar. Even the J-School’s normally aloof director, Susan Dillon, dropped by twice. Fortunately, no one knew I’d been to Lovers’ Lane that morning.
Helen, who has a story instinct on a Louella Parsons level, poked her lean body into my office about lunchtime. “Wasn’t Maggie one of your students, Henrie O?” Her bright, clever brown eyes scoured my face.
“Yes.”
Our eyes locked for a moment.
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